Jocelyn Murphy
by CRebel
Summary: Pastor Jim had a wife and a daughter. When that daughter was nine years old, tragedy struck and family bliss deteriorated. When that daughter - Jocelyn - was ten years old, Jim begged John Winchester to take her. Now, six years later, John's gone missing, and Dean, Sam, and Jocelyn will go to the ends of the earth to find him.
1. Happy Halloween

**(From the private journal of Jocelyn Murphy)**

_9:45 p.m., Oct 22_

_Dean and I are still in New Orleans. Job's done, we're supposed to meet up with John, but we haven't heard from him since we went to California. That was two weeks ago. This is bad._

_. . . . . _

_10:50 p.m., Oct 27_

_It's been almost three weeks since John went to California and still no word. We called everyone who might have heard from him. Even my dad. Nothing. It's been too long. Dean's worried, won't say it, but he is. So am I._

_. . . . . _

_12:45 a.m., Oct 31_

_Dean got a voicemail today – yesterday – from John. All J said was that something big was happening, we need to be careful, we're all in danger. . . Nothing about where he is, no details of what he's hunting, but there was EVP on the voicemail. We cleaned it up, got "I can never go home." Sounded like a woman. D's more worried now. Don't think he can wait much longer. Good. _

_. . . . . _

. . . . .

. . . . .

BANG BANG BANG.

Pause.

BANG BANG BANG.

Dean waited again, looking over his shoulder at the half-full parking lot. His eyes spared no time landing on the Impala, the only halfway-decent car at this roadside hole-in-the-wall of a motel. Jocelyn's motorcycle sat close by, and the intense desire to burn some rubber flared up in Dean, so he whirled around, pounded on the motel door some more.

_BANG BANG – _

It opened. Jocelyn appeared.

Dressed in sweats and one of John's old shirts, with her dark hair a mess and her face set in an I-was-sleeping-you-asshole grimace, she could have passed for any other sixteen-year-old unexpectedly roused. Except for the dagger hanging from her hand.

Dean grinned. "Happy Halloween."

"Bite me." She leaned against the frame, flinched against the sunlight. "You scared the hell out of me. This is why we get keys to each other's rooms, you know."

"Couldn't find it," Dean lied. He hadn't been thinking very clearly this morning, had only wanted to get on the road.

"You could've called my phone."

"God, you're irritating when you whine. Look –" He nodded at the Styrofoam cups in his hands. "I brought you coffee. Now shut up."

She sighed and wiggled fingers at the offering. He gave her a cup, she took a long sip, rubbed her mouth and then her forehead, and guilt tugged at Dean the whole time. She was too pale. Grey bags had made themselves at home under her eyes. Maybe –

No. He had spent most of last night and most of this morning thinking over today, and he wasn't about to change his mind now. Couldn't. Jocelyn could sleep on the way. "Chug that fast. We need to go."

"John?"

"Yep." Not a lie. His plan to get Sam was _part_ of his plan to find John. He just wouldn't explain the connection to Jocelyn until he had her miles away, in a diner somewhere, too late to turn back.

"Give me ten minutes."

"Hey, brush you hair!" he called as she shut the door. "I'm not lookin' at that all day."

There was a loud _bang_ that rattled the doorknob, and Dean figured something had just been chucked at his head.

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

**(From the private journal of Jocelyn Murphy)**

_10:30 a.m., Oct 31_

_Dean got me up at 7:00 this morning. Handed me coffee and said let's roll. I thought we were going to Jericho. Wasn't until we were at a diner for some late breakfast that he said "Stanford" and I realized what his plan was._

_I tried to talk him out of it but he wouldn't listen. We're going to get Sam. Dean says he deserves to be a part of this. _

_I argued some more. Nothing. I told him fine, I'll just go to Jericho on my own, because I want nothing to do with Sam, not after all this time. But D went all John on me and said hell no, he already couldn't find his dad and he wasn't about to let me out of his sight, too. Which was kind of sweet, but also kind of infuriating. The whole thing's kind of infuriating._

_He's jumping to this too fast. He and I could find John on our own. Sam hasn't hunted in years. And he probably doesn't give a damn about John._

_But Dean won't listen to me._

_I don't like this._

. . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .


	2. Stanford

Dean turned on the step and looked up at his little brother. "Now are you gonna come with me or not?"

Sam didn't blink. "I'm not."

"_Why_ not?"

"I swore I was done hunting. For good." The younger Winchester worked to keep his voice down – they were standing on a staircase in his apartment building, and the thought of waking everyone up in the middle of the night with a screaming match over demon hunting really wasn't appealing.

"Come on." Dean headed down the remaining stairs. "It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad."

"Yeah?" Sam followed Dean down and right up to the nearest exit, a door with a curving window that brought white light flooding in from the alley outside. "When I told Dad that I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45."

"Well, what was he supposed to do?"

"I was _nine years old_. He was supposed to say don't be afraid of the dark."

"Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark! You know what's out there!"

"Yeah, I know . . . but still, the way we grew up after Mom was killed, and Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her. And dragging Jocelyn around like it was her fight –"

"It _is _her fight, Sam. It's been six years since Pastor Jim had us take her. She never even talks to him if she can help it, she considers us her family, and she wants to find the demon that killed Mom as much as we do –"

"But after all these years, we _still _haven't found the damn thing. So we kill everything we _can _find!"

"And save a lot of people doin' it, too."

Silence. Neither of them looked away from the other, and then Sam went for it, the soft spot, even though he knew it was wrong: "You think Mom would have wanted this for us?"

That's when Dean shoved open the door – hard – and disappeared outside. Sam followed. The air was cold out here.

"The weapons training? The melting silver into bullets?" He stayed just a step behind Dean, up a short set of concrete stairs, and they were in a dark alleyway now, as spooky as one would expect on Halloween night. Sam had seen worse, he hardly noticed. "Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors."

"So what're you gonna do? You just gonna live some normal, apple-pie life?" Dean stopped beside a lone car in the alley, a scowl on his face. "Is that it?"

"No. Not _normal_. Safe."

"That why you ran away?"

This was a new voice. Only it wasn't new, not really. Sam's chest constricted. He reevaluated his surroundings and discovered he had missed a couple of major details.

For one thing, the car parked here was not some anonymous vehicle. He now recognized the smooth outline of a'67 Chevy Impala. _The _Impala. The car he had been raised in.

But, even more importantly, there was a figure moving around the car, a figure with crossed arms and a tilted head. Oh, God. She had changed. He swallowed the lump in his throat. "Hey, Jocelyn. I almost didn't recognize you."

"Lotta changes between twelve and sixteen."

She was taller. She had lost most of her baby fat. Her hair was longer, curling at the end – she looked more like a woman than a girl, cute had turned pretty –

But that too-civil tone of voice, just uncontrolled enough to hint at her true feelings, and this look she was giving him, with her chin up, her lips pressed too tightly together . . . that might as well have been straight from his memory. That was almost comforting.

He'd been stupid, not to have been expecting her from the moment he saw Dean.

"I didn't run away, you know," he finally said. "I was just going to college. It was _Dad_ who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone . . . and that's what I'm doing."

Jocelyn sighed. Dean jumped in. "Yeah, well, Dad's in real trouble right now – if he's not dead already – I can _feel_ it."

"Me, too," said Jocelyn.

"Look," said Dean. "Joss and I . . . we can't do this alone."

Sam shook his head. "Yes, you can."

Dean looked at Jocelyn, who stayed still and silent. "Yeah . . ." he admitted. "Well, we don't want to."

She ducked her head.

Sam didn't know what to say. Dean cleared his throat, Jocelyn kept staring at the ground.

Finally Sam asked what John had been hunting.

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

**(From the private journal of Jocelyn Murphy)**

_1:00 a.m., Nov 1_

_Dean went to get Sam from the dorm and I waited in an alley. I wanted a cigarette. It's been nearly three months since I last had one, but damn, I wanted one. I kept thinking I heard sounds in the alley, kind of hoped for it, really. Dealing with a spirit, a monster, a rabid Saint Bernard, whatever – it would have easier. _

_D came out with S after a few minutes. S hasn't changed much at all. When I saw him, all I could think about was the night he left. I wanted to hug him, I wanted to hit him, I wanted to cry and scream and stomp my feet and finally, finally ask him how he could have left, how he could have left without telling me goodbye. I wanted to tell him I had missed him, I wanted to ask if he had missed me, I wanted to tell him to go to hell. _

_Instead, I froze up behind D like a four-year-old hiding from a stranger. _

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

"Where the hell did I put that thing?" Dean's eyes scoured the trunk of the car, filled to the brim with deadly weapons he had no use for at the moment. He needed something much more mundane. Jocelyn stooped beside him and Sam leaned against the car.

"So when Dad left, why didn't you two go with him?"

"We were working a gig . . ." Dean shoved a bag of salt to the side, moved over a machete. "This voodoo thing down in New Orleans . . . Didn't I give it to you?"

"Nope." Jocelyn squinted, reached forward.

"Dad let you guys go on a hunting trip alone?"

"I'm twenty-six, dude."

Jocelyn stood up straight, yanking something from the depths of the trunk. "And I can handle myself pretty well," she said as she handed a manila folder to Dean, who opened it immediately.

"Here we go . . . So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. A month ago – this guy." He handed Sam an article. "They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA."

"So maybe he was kidnapped."

"He's not the first, though." Jocelyn turned her back to the open trunk, propped one of her boots against the car. "There was one back in April, one back in '04 . . ." She gave Dean a nod and he took over, throwing down article after article.

"'03, '98, '92 . . . Ten of them over the past twenty years. All men."

"All the same five-mile stretch of road," finished Jocelyn. "John went to dig around when it started happening more often."

Dean dropped the now-empty folder on top of the stack of articles and dug into his pocket for his cell. "That was about three weeks ago. We haven't heard from him since, which is bad enough. And then I get this voicemail yesterday. . ." He played it.

"_Dean . . . something big is starting to happen . . . I need to try and figure out what's going on . . . It may . . . Be very careful, Dean. Keep Jocelyn close. We're all in danger."_

"You know, there's EVP on that," Sam said the moment the message cut off.

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Not bad, Sammy. Kind of like ridin' a bike, isn't it?"

Jocelyn tapped her fingers against her arms. Rapidly.

"Okay, I slowed the message down," Dean said, "Ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what we got."

Another click of a button, and the subsequent whisper spread through the air like fog: _"I can never go home."_

"Never go home," Sam repeated.

Dean nudged Jocelyn away from the Impala and slammed the trunk closed. She fell back into her previous position, he settled in beside her and looked at his brother. His kid brother. His kid brother he could only hope he still knew, even only a little, after all this time. "You know, in two years, I've never bothered you, I've never asked you for a thing."

Sam looked at both of them, looked away, looked at both of them again, ended on Dean.

"Alright. I'll go. I'll help you find him."

Dean nodded, his expression neutral.

"But I need to be back first thing Monday. Just wait here."

Dean couldn't resist. "What's first thing Monday?"

"I have this . . . I have an interview."

"What, a job interview? Skip it."

"It's a _law school _interview, and it's my whole future on a plate."

"Law school," Dean echoed. Jocelyn made a huffing noise. Sam either ignored or didn't hear her.

"So we got a deal or not?" he asked Dean.

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

_1:00 a.m., Nov 1 (cont.)_

_We briefed Sam on the situation. We played him the voicemail, he caught the EVP. Kind of like riding a bike, Dean said. So maybe S remembers a thing or two. I don't know. Not sure I buy it. _

_But he's coming with us. He agreed to help us look for John, but he has to be back by Monday. He has an interview for law school. S wants to be a lawyer. He wants a safe life. Without hunting. Without us._

_He didn't miss me. He barely seems to have missed his own brother or father. Who needs to be __convinced__ to look for his own dad, a dad like John? Of course he didn't miss me. Screw me for missing him, for ever missing him._

_. . . . . _

. . . . .

. . . . .

Dean dug an elbow into Jocelyn's shoulder as soon as Sam was gone. "You mind stopping the ice princess routine, Bette Davis?"

"I was never the princess type. I used to dress up as a pirate for Halloween. And _sometimes_ I kill monsters. I don't think Cinderella was into that."

"He agreed to come with us, Joss."

She kept her attention on a plastic jack-o-lantern hanging by its wires from a nearby fire escape. She said nothing.

"That's a good thing. You told me you didn't wanna come get him because you didn't think he would wanna come with us."

"He left us once, Dean. He's going to do it again – first thing Monday."

He stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the dead plastic pumpkin. She tilted her head back to make sure he saw her very impatient expression, but his face suggested this bothered him only minimally, and his voice lowered. Damn. "Look, keeping him with us is not the important thing right now. The important thing right now is finding my dad, so if you're gonna be pissed at Sam, fine, but don't let it interfere with your focus."

"You're so cute when you try to sound like John."

He looked beyond her. "That's it. I'm dropping you off at the pound."

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

_1:00 a.m., Nov 1 (cont.)_

_Sam couldn't believe it when he saw my motorcycle. Made me laugh. I doubt Dean will tell him the story behind it, so let's just hope S thinks I'm that much more of a badass. Definitely couldn't hurt._

_Time to go to Jericho. Going to find John. _


End file.
